Ep #11: Helping American's Know What They're Retiring "To" With Katherine Roy from J.P. Morgan

Katherine Roy is Chief Retirement Strategist for J.P. Morgan where she leads a team that focuses on providing unique insights that can be used to provide better retirement planning advice to investors.

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1/4/2021 - 69 minutes


Episode Summary

My guest today is Katherine Roy, who is Chief Retirement Strategist for J.P. Morgan. In this role, she is responsible for delivering timely retirement-related insights to financial advisors and has focused on the retirement income-related landscape for more than 15 years. Katherine specializes in identifying themes, strategies and solutions that can help advisors successfully partner with individuals in the transition and distribution life stages, and she's a top speaker at major industry and firm specific conferences and events. I think at the end of this episode, you're going to understand why.


On today's episode, Katherine shares her insights from J.P. Morgan's research like their Guide to Retirement, as well as findings from their collaborative efforts with the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) around spending and savings behavior of American households. We discuss retiree spending behavior patterns, sequence of return risk, the impact of health care costs on retirement income spending, the role of guaranteed income for plan participants, and retirees, and how plan sponsors and advisors can redesign the participant experience to incorporate retirement income tiers that meet the evolving needs of participants who choose to stay in plan, post-retirement.


I really enjoyed this conversation with Katherine. She's super sharp, and has a tremendous working knowledge of the retirement issues and challenges facing American workers, which she communicates in a really practical, understandable way. So, with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Fiduciary U™ podcast.


What You'll Learn

  • Insights into retiree spending behavior patterns from J.P. Morgan’s Guide to Retirement.
  • Strategies to guard against sequence of return risk and spending volatility.
  • Katherine’s thoughts on the 4% rule.
  • What she has found in her research when it comes to healthcare costs in retirement.
  • How the retirement industry needs to evolve from an accumulation mindset to a decumulation mindset.
  • What the need (and appetite) really is for guaranteed income in retirement solutions.
  • Plan design strategies employers should consider adopting to help participants who choose to stay in-plan, post-retirement.
  • How Katherine sees the nature of retirement changing over the next 10 years.
  • Her best piece of advice for ERISA fiduciaries.


Links to Resources


Ideas Worth Sharing

  1. “Americans know what they’re retiring from, but they don’t always know what they’re retiring to.” - Katherine Roy
  2. "The day you retire is your biggest risk day, because that's when your wealth is typically greatest." - Katherine Roy
  3. “The 4% rule is a rule that I love to hate.” - Katherine Roy
  4. "We really do believe that a guaranteed solution or protected income, particularly for individuals who only have social security, is going to be important. And, we see that in our data." - Katherine Roy
  5. "We see a tremendous amount of spending volatility in retirement which really surprised us." - Katherine Roy